The character sheet can be found here:  Witchgates CharacterSheet

To reference what is on the sheet, see the labels on the below image:

A) Character Concept

A character concept is the highest level description of what defines a character to their player, what concept is the rest of the character built around. A few words, such as “loony ducklingmancer” or “recently fired fisherman” help convey the image of a character and what their qualitative and quantitative traits might be. Mage’s concept will often hint at their magical Knacks (point J). No character is strictly beholden to their initial concept, but each can trace some aspect of their identity to it.

B) Aura

A mage’s aura represents their unique magical fingerprint. It alters the light from a mage’s spell casting and shapes how spells express themselves. Generally, a mage’s aura is invisible unless they are casting a spell, and even then it only expresses itself briefly and in the spell itself. However, mages can use their Mage Sight to view the auras that surround all creatures, including other mages and themselves.

Though auras are generally described as a light around the body, they can actually have near infinite sensory descriptions. One mage may have a holy light surrounding them, another mage’s aura may appear to warp reality towards them, and a third mage’s aura might remind people of freshly baked food on a warm, spring day.

Creatures naturally hide their auras when sneaking around, but intelligent creatures can attempt to hide their auras with subterfuge at anytime.

C) Attributes and Abilities

Attributes and their counterpart Abilities represent a character’s physical capabilities.
Attributes range from -2 to 2, with each one providing a unique benefit.
Abilities act as physical skills which are used for Ability Checks, rolls that rely more on a character’s natural ability than their knowledge and skills.
There are 6 Attributes in total

• Agility measures a character’s flexibility, reflexes, and balance. Agility helps characters dodge physical attacks and affects how much Grit a character has, which can be used to improve rolls.
• Constitution represents your character’s general physical well being and stamina. It directly directly affects a character’s health and helps them resist illnesses, poisons, overexertion, and other unhealthy risks.
• Intelligence determines how well your character learns, remembers, reasons, and understands. As such, it directly affects a mage’s understanding of magic, Mana, and their ability to maintain concentration on different various, including spells.
• Perception describes a character’s awareness of their surroundings and ability to notice oddities and useful scene traits. Perception affects how many Fortune points a character has, which players can use to add details to a scene or story; details that their character noticed for their own advantage.
• Resolve represents a character’s mental fortitude and willpower. It acts as the mental counterpart to Constitution, directly affecting a character’s Mental Health. Resolve ability checks help avoid mental stress and manipulation. Lastly, Resolve also affects the amount of Grit a character has.
• Strength measures a character’s physical might, muscle, and prowess. It helps a character push past physical obstacles and increases the damage of their melee attacks. Furthermore, a mage’s strength directly translates to the physical strength of their spells.

D) Physical and Mental Health, Healing, and Essence

Physical and Mental health represent a character’s current well-being.
For each trait, players should fill in the small circle underneath a number of boxes, from left to right, equal to their Physical or Mental Health. These boxes represent a character’s maximum, total health, and the rest of the boxes can be ignored.

When a character takes damage, they fill in the damage based on the type of damage taken. When all of the boxes for a character are filled with any type of damage, that character is knocked unconscious. Bashing wounds are recorded with a ‘\’ and represent surface wounds, and wounds that are easily healed and taken care of. Severe wounds are recorded with an ‘X’ and generally represent wounds that require medical attention to properly heal, such as gunshot and stabbing wounds. Severe wounds may leave a scar, but Aggravated wounds persist. Aggravated wounds are marked with an astrix ‘*’ and represent extreme forms of trauma, often caused by supernatural assaults.

Stress Markers:
Every 3 health boxes are separated by a stress marker ‘/.’ Some merits, weapons, and abilities may cause an additional effect whenever damage passes a stress marker. Furthermore, anytime a stress marker is passed on a mage, their lowest ranked splice will activate.

Taking Damage:

• Mark damage in boxes left to right
• Higher damage levels always overlap lower ones. [Bashing < Severe < Aggravated]
• Damage can upgrade damage of the same level instead of filling an empty box (player choice). (Likewise, this means a player can sometimes choose to go unconscious)
• If unable to upgrade damage or fill an empty box, the damage upgrades the lowest box(s).
• Stress Markers are represented by ‘/‘ between health boxes. Various abilities may refer to passing these marks.

Healing Clock:

The healing clock is a tool used to heal a character’s damage, both for Physical and Mental Health.
Given 8 hours of rest, all bashing wounds are erased and a player can make a medical check to treat character wounds, taking a -1 penalty if they are treating their own wounds. This medical check is made for the entire period of rest, even if the period of rest covers multiple days (unless the GM declares otherwise). The Medicine skill check adds segments to the clock depending on the result of the roll:

• Miss: 1 segment in the healing clock (trouble=0)
• Glance: 2 segments in the healing clock.
• Hit: 3 segments of the healing clock

When the healing clock is filled, erase all of the segments, leaving a 0-2 segments filled if excess segments were gained by the medical check. Then erase all severe wounds and remove 1 aggravated wound.

Essence is a uniquely empty trait that only fills when a character is knocked unconscious. When unconscious, a character can have an Out of Body Experience, and attempt to continue interacting with the game as a spirit. However, a spirit’s essence not only fuels it’s abilities, but also acts as its health. If a spirit’s essence drops to zero there is no return.

E) Armor, Initiative, Mana, Grit, and Fortune

Armor
Armor reduces the damage a character takes justified sources. Common physical armor will reduce damage from most physical attacks, but might not prevent electrical or burning damage. Magical spells can provide armor against physical and mental damage. The description of the armor always matters though, as that is what is used to determine if the armor applies. If you have a bullet proof duster and an enemy aims at your head, you might still have a bad time.

Armor has two values: Current and Total. Most of the time these values start the same but only the current armor value matters when reducing damage from attacks.

Attackers might need to weaken their opponent’s armor before they can make lethal attacks. To do so, an attacker can choose to target the defender’s armor directly. If the attacker succeeds with a Hit, the armor’s current value decreases by one and the wielder takes 1 Bashing damage.
Armor can be repaired back to its total value with tools and the crafts skill while resting. A partial success restores 1 armor point, and a full success (Hit) restores 2 armor points. Some magical spells might make repairing armor much quicker.

Initiative
Initiative is gained and used during action scenes. In an action scene, actions alternate between the players and NPCs, but players can spend initiative to change it up. During an action scene, players can spend initiative to:

1. Take their upcoming turn early as a reaction to another character’s action. The outcome of a reaction resolves before that of the action they respond to.
2. Take two actions in a row, but cannot take an action in the next NPC and Player round. Only one of these actions can be to deal damage to an enemy. While, these actions must occur during the players’ round, other player characters can take their turns between the actions.
3. Take an action during a round after the used initiative for #2 or #3. The player cannot take an action during the next NPC and Player round.
4. In case players cannot decide amongst themselves who should act first, the player who spends the most initiative goes first.

Mana, Grit, and Fortune are resources that the player can spend for different outcomes in the game.

• Mana represents a mage’s magical understanding and is thus an integral tool when casting spells. A mage can temporarily (or permanently) exhaust their Mana for various purposes. Available Mana also increases the number of dice available when casting a spell. The base Mana equals 5+ Intelligence.
  • Spend 1 Mana to bump 1 die used in casting a spell. (increase the value by 1)
  • Spend 1 Mana to gain 1 dice when rolling to resist hostile magic.
  • Invest Mana to create a permanent spell that does not require concentration.
    See Enchanting for more details on permanent spells.
    • If a spell requires 2 or fewer hits to cast: Invest 1 Mana
    • If a spell requires 3 or more hits to cast: Invest 2 Mana
• Grit represents a characters ability to persevere through challenge, pushing fate through sheer willpower and quick actions. Grit equals Resolve + Agility.
  • Spend 1 Grit before a roll to gain 1 die for the roll
  • Spend 1 Grit after a roll for a +1 bump on any of the dice rolled.
• Fortune allows a character to notice unmentioned details within a scene that they might be able to take advantage of. Spending Fortune is a player action, not a PC action, meaning it can be done out of turn during action scenes. Spending Fortune always requires GM approval on the desired effect. Fortune equals 2 + Perception
  • Create a 2 die scene aspect.
  • Add a minor detail to a scene, something that does not break the scene but can be potentially utilized. Details can be visual (a bedroom window) or story based (an NPC has a relative which you remind them of).

F) Ammo and Resources

Ammo is not explicitly tracked with every attack for ranged weapons. The game assumes that characters are able to acquire necessary ammo off-screen. Instead, ammo acts as a meta resource that can be spent for an additional effect (often increased damage). Different weapons have different ammo capacities, allowing for more or fewer additional effects before requiring an action to reload.
Ammo can be used for the following effects, though some ranged combat stances grant additional uses.

• • [Ammo 4] Autofire Long Burst: Spend 4 Ammo to target an entire cluster of adjacent targets, pending on GM approval. A +3 bonus is applied to the attack roll and defenders roll in any order they wish (or first declared rolls last). Each defender gets a +1 bonus to their roll for each defender that rolled before them. (care friendly fire)
  • [Ammo 3] Autofire Medium Burst: Spend 3 Ammo to target up to three adjacent targets as the shooter wants, pending on GM approval. A +2 bonus is applied to the attack roll and defenders roll in any order they wish (or first declared rolls last). Each defender gets a +1 bonus to their roll for each defender that rolled before them.
  • [Ammo 1] Autofire Short Burst: Spend 1 Ammo at a single target to gain a +1 bonus to the roll.
  • [Ammo 1] Wounding Shot: Spend 1 Ammo after rolling for an attack to deal 1 additional damage.
  • [Ammo 1] Dual Wield Attack: Spend 1 Ammo and 1 initiative token to attack with a second offhand weapon on the same turn.

Resources abstract a characters income, excess funds, debts, and spending habits.

Income represents the general wealth the player characters possess and maintains through jobs and other cash inflows. It also represents how much debt a character can maintain without getting into trouble. Unspent resources from income are marked with an ‘i.’ A player can never have more ‘i’ boxes than their income value.

Lifestyle represents a character’s regular lifestyle expenses, including food, rent/mortgage, clothes, and other comfort monthly expenses. Lifestyles allow players to avoid spending resources for general levels of comfort, meaning a rich player will likely spend less on clothing and food than a poor player.

A character’s Recovery Rate is equal to Income – Resources, and determines how many resource boxes a character restores or must pay at the end of the month.

Debt: If players do not have enough resources to afford something, they can attempt to purchase it anyways by putting themselves in another person’s debt. When attempting to spend debt, a player can either roll Negotiation against the seller to go in the seller’s debt, or roll Connections to request funds from a third party. With a Hit the debtor will cover only the remaining cost (spent by marking debt boxes). With a Glance the debtor will require 1 additional box to the remaining cost. These additional boxes are marked with a ‘D’ for debt.

A player can only have as much debt as their income level. If they exceed this amount the additional box(s) is marked with a “t” for trouble, asking the GM to create a consequence to the character’s debt. These boxes can only be recovered by resolving the trouble in story with the debtor.

G) Gear

Based on a character’s Strength they are able to carry up to 5 containers.  The player defines what each container is: a utility belt, a backpack, a sack, etc.  Items can be stored in various containers, but the story may interact with the individual containers and their contents.

Worn items, such as clothing, a watch, and the containers themselves, do not take inventory space. Similarly, a character may opt to carry any item in their hands, but doing so prevents the player from using that hand for anything else until they drop the item.

Having inventory tracked by containers allows players to consider the importance of where items are. Thieves can target specific containers for items and losing an entire container means losing all of the items inside it. Players may need to drop things to pickup a new container in a fetch quest, or may need to look at their gear types to see what they can fit new items into. The consequence of a failed check or partial success may affect a specific container, and any items in it.

H) Skills, and Experience

Skills demonstrate a character’s trained and accumulated knowledge in specific fields. When a character attempts a task with an inherent challenge and consequence, they will often be required to make a skill check, rolling dice equal to the character’s level in the appropriate skill. Skills have levels from 0 to 5 (when rolling for a skill with a level 0, players roll 2d6 and pick the lowest).

Skill grow through use, and as such are the main method for player characters to get experience, which is used to either level up the skill or to acquire other traits.

At level 2, the Combat skill allow players to choose a combat stance which grows in strength with the level of the skill. These stances provide additional options when a character fights under the conditions required by the stance.

Experience
When a player fails a skill check or a spellcasting roll, they record potential experience as an ‘X’ in a circle beside the skill or arcana. After the game session or as allowed by the GM, 4 of these Xs may be filled in and converted into experience, with all other Xs erased.

When all of the circles beside a skill or arcana fill with experience, that trait levels up and the circles are emptied. Players can also use a combination of experience from various skills and arcana to gain other traits as well, as shown on in the Player Advancement section of the Core Mechanics. Once used, the experience is erased.

I) Specialties

Specialties represent areas of expertise within different skill sets. Unlike skills players do not choose between a list of specialties, but instead create them themselves. We provide examples, but specialties specifically include subjects not explicitly listed in the rules.

When a player makes a skill check that involves one of their specialties they gain a +1 bump to the roll, meaning they can increase the number on one die by 1.

J) Arcana and Knacks

In Witchgates, magic falls into six different schools of study known as Arcana. A character’s level within an Arcana represents their knowledge and capabilities within that field of magic, with each level within an arcana granting access to additional spell components from which to build spells.

Each Arcana covers a large assortment of magical specialties known as Knacks. While an Arcana provides components, a mage’s Knacks determine how they can use those components and what they can use the components on.

• Forces covers the natural energies and laws found in the universe. Wielders of this arcana can sense energy around them, alter its course, store it within their bodies, insulate targets from an energy, and much more.
  • Example Knacks: light, darkness, heat, cold, fire, electricity, gravity, kinetic energy, radiation, velocity, sound, illusions.
• Life covers all living matter, from tiny, single-cell bacteria to large grizzly bears and beyond. Mages use this arcana to detect other living creatures, manipulate biological instincts, move living mass, to give creatures traits from another, and to fully transform creatures into others. Furthermore, this arcana allows mages to move wounds from one creature to another, effectively healing the original target.
  • Example Knacks: insects, plants, mushrooms, blood, humans, hunger, healing
• Matter covers all nonliving matter, including dead organic matter. Practitioners act as alchemist to change the traits of raw materials or transform them into something different.
  • Example Knacks: H2O, Dirt, Oxygen, Iron, Oil, Acids, Vapor, Alcohol
• Mind covers consciousness, the thoughts and awareness of a being. The arcana allows mages to read minds and memories, interact with dreams, and control a creatures actions through thought. Furthermore, it can be used to transfer mental wounds to another willing target, allowing mages to literally share one’s burdens.
  • Example Knacks: Rodents, Humans, Envy, Rage, Relationships, Artificial intelligence, Hallucinations
• Spacetime covers spatial and temporal relationships. Practitioners can divine future and past events, view distant locations, teleport between locations, rewind time, and change the spatial axes of locations.
  • Limited Knacks: The Arcana is unique for only having two Knacks – space and time.
  • Spacetime magic often deals with distant or abstract targets, making sympathetic connections more necessary.
• Spirit covers the ephemeral world and its inhabitants. Mages use the arcana to create items out of ectoplasm and to summon spirits. Spirits can embody an infinite number of concepts, and each spirit has some degree of influence over the concepts it embodies. Because of this variety, spirit mages are considered jacks-of-all trades, since even if they do not have the expertise for a task, they can often summon a spirit to do the task for them. However, spirits also have their own personalities, and are not always the easiest to deal with. Spirit mages do not need a Knack to target spirits that they can actively see.
  • Example Knacks: Spirits of Hunger, the Hunt, or Fire. Human spirits or Cat spirits. Ectoplasmic firearms, marionettes, or swords.

Knacks are the core defining and distinguishing feature of a mage. They determine how a mage builds and cast their spells. Ultimately, there are two types of Knacks:

Subject Knacks: These Knacks cover a specific subject underneath one of the Arcana, such as “fire” for Forces or “fungus” for Life. A mage can use any spell components to manipulate or affect one of their Knacks.

Component Knacks: Alternatively, a Knack may cover a specific type of spell component gained from an Arcana (such as “heal” components in Life or the “transform” components in Matter). When using a spell focused on component Knacks, the mage does not need to worry about having a Knack for what the spell is affecting or manipulating.

Comparing the two types of Knacks: Example with the Forces Arcana
Mage A has the subject knack “electricity” while mage B has the component Knack “Alter Energy”
Mage A can create electricity, alter electronic data, and detect electricity, but they can’t do anything with fire.
Mage B can’t create electricity or detect fire, but they can alter electronic data, or make an object flamable, and turn fire invisible.

The Spirit Exception: The Spirit Arcana does not require a Knack to target visible spirits, though they still need a Knack to summon or create a spirit.

Know Thyself:
All mages consider themselves as Knacks, meaning they can cast spell components on themselves. For example, an insect mage might be able to give themselves bug eyes to better detect movement, but the same mage would not be able to cast the same spell on another human (because the spell is ‘affecting’ the human and the mage does not have a knack for ‘human’).

K) General XP and Goals

Upon completing a character or story based goal, the GM can award the player(s) 2 General Experience which can be marked here. General experience can be used just like other experience when purchasing traits as described in the Player Advancement section.

L) Merits and Abilities

Players should use this area to record any merits and additional abilities gained through enchantments, combat stances, or weapon specialties.

M) Flaws and Spell Splices

Character flaws act as character traits to roleplay and as weaknesses which can be used against players, penalizing justified rolls by knowledgeable enemies. During character creation, flaws can be taken to gain more character creation points to build the character.

Splices are inevitable manifestations of magic upon mages. When a player rolls a critical trouble when spellcasting, their spell backlashes and splices with the player character. Each arcana describes how its splices might manifest and how they may worsen over several backlashes. Although splices are not inherently negative, they are a constant reminder of magic that threatens to break control under duress.

When a mage’s spell splices, the player may record a tier 1 splice or upgrade any splice under the same Arcana to the next tier, up to tier 4. In general, higher tier splices have all of the effects described by lower tiers.

A mage can only ever have 5 different splices. Once a mage reaches this limit, any newly acquired one must upgrade a current splice on the mage or, if the mage does not have any of the same arcana to be upgraded, the new splice replaces the lowest severity one on the mage.

Splices have 3 stages of activity, based on how much Mana has and how much duress they are in.

• Dormant: When a mage has 0 Mana they become unable to cast magic but their splices are also unable to manifest.
• Static: Splices have a constant effect perpetually active as long as the mage has some Mana available.
• Active: Whenever a mage’s health passes a stress marker, their weakest splice activates, though a GM may allow a separate backlash to activate for narrative purposes. Active splices cause additional trouble and act on their own.

Randomizing a Splice: Some splice manifest themselves physically on a caster’s body. When a spell splices, a player can choose to randomize the location of the splice by rolling a d6 and checking the below table:

Result	1	2	3	4	5	6
Location	Head	Eye	Torso	Back	Arm	Leg

N) Maintain Aspect Die

When a player creates an aspect in the scene, they may record the name of the aspect and store the aspect’s dice here until they are used.

P) Spell Die Allocation

This area acts as a minimal spell casting sheet to help players allocate their dice to various spell components when casting a spell.